September 2005

September 30, 2005

Will it be the functionally illiterate single mother, whose family has a high incidence of illiteracy, who was raped when she was 15 and then became wild, she says, because of a loss of self esteem because she was raped?

Or, will it be the drug addict mother, whose family took her child away from her because she was an addict, who, when placed in a dire situation, offered meth to a criminal?

After the criticism of his disastrous handling the Katrina disaster, President George Bush promises a reconstruction programme of $200bn for areas destroyed by the hurricane. But the first and biggest beneficiaries will be businesses that specialise in profiting from disaster, and have already had lucrative contracts in Iraq; they will gentrify New Orleans at the expense of its poor, black citizens.

September 29, 2005

Allegedly an AP news item, but it had no links and I couldn't verify it (the Kanye and Pepsi around the world promotion is still playing at pepsi.com) but hey, like the MSM's coverage of black folks in New Orleans, sometimes you gotta break some eggs in order to make up some news;

Kanye West, former spokesperson for Pepsi, has since lost his endorsement deal with the soft drink giant due to his publicized remarks regarding the mishandling of the Katrina evacuees/victims.

The rest of the note enclosed calls for a boycott of Pepsi products. Other than the Quaker Oats, I don't see any non-expendable health food items being peddled by Pepsi.

Black-Partisan Republicans, to distinguish them from Black Republicans and despised Black Conservatives, sometimes have to take one for the Republican team. Though they know better, both morally and intellectually, because of the fact that black folk remain hyperdependant on middle-eastern petroleum too, somebody has to suck it up and act hard in support of the republic's incredibly imaginative just-so-stories spun in support of the discretionary quagmire that thuggery has wrought.

September 27, 2005

Ashley Smith frank about her flaws in new book
She gave Brian Nichols meth to put alleged killer at ease

By JENNIFER BRETT
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 09/27/05

Ashley Smith, the woman held hostage for hours after the March 11 Fulton County Courthouse shootings, reveals in a book released today that she gave alleged gunman Brian Nichols drugs on the night he held her captive.

Smith, 27, was thrust into a national media spotlight after talking her way out of Nichols' captivity and then calling police. In "Unlikely Angel: The Untold Story of the Atlanta Hostage Hero," Smith shares details of her seven-hour ordeal as a hostage in her Duluth apartment, and for the first time tells of giving Nichols drugs.
Nichols asked her for marijuana, she writes, but she had only a small amount of crystal methamphetamine. She thought offering him the drug might curry favor, but she says she refused to take the drug with him.

"I was not going to die tonight and stand before God, having done a bunch of ice up my nose," she writes.

The religious leaders that have Bush’s ear must hold him to his word. If he reneges, they should publicly disassociate themselves from him. Katrina’s victims need an authentic unity, one that will deliver sustainable results so they can reconstruct their lives.

What. Ever.

Mathis is on the inside of Democratic politics. Why not ask about holding the CBC members accountable?

After five days managing near-riots, medical horrors and unspeakable living conditions inside the Superdome, Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron prepared to hand over the dead to representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the Dome, the doctor from FEMA - Beron doesn't remember his name - came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies.

"I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalls the doctor saying.

The real total was six, Beron said.

Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the turning over of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice. State health department officials in charge of body recovery put the official death count at the Dome at 10, but Beron said the other four bodies were found in the street near the Dome, not inside it. Both sources said no one had been killed inside.

At the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, just four bodies were recovered, despites reports of corpses piled inside the building. Only one of the dead appeared to have been slain, said health and law enforcement officials.

...

"I think 99 percent of it is bulls---," said Sgt. 1st Class Jason Lachney, who played a key role in security and humanitarian work inside the Dome. "Don't get me wrong, bad things happened, but I didn't see any killing and raping and cutting of throats or anything. ... Ninety-nine percent of the people in the Dome were very well-behaved."

...

"I had the impression that at least 40 or 50 murders had occurred at the two sites," he said. "It's unfortunate we saw these kinds of stories saying crime had taken place on a massive scale when that wasn't the case. And they (national media outlets) have done nothing to follow up on any of these cases, they just accepted what people (on the street) told them. ... It's not consistent with the highest standards of journalism."

September 25, 2005

Lynne continues structural meditations on being the media. The angle of approach is waaaay steep for my preferences, see, I believe all the enabling technology required has been around for a while but that the bottleneck is the rate of grass roots adoption. Seems etherially interwoven with the notion of a community systems group.., necessity being the inflection point for essential communal adoption and repurposing of existing technology.

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End VC PSA

Enclosed is CEO of Black Energy, Dr. Sonja Ebron's prescient and profoundly insightful 2.5 year old article On Why African Americans Should Oppose the War in the Black Commentator. This article is suitable for framing and gifting to republicans formerly known as black. It is particularly apropos for those deeply conflicted few - who mendaciously cheerlead the loony, losing, and incompetent neocon buccaneers in their catastrophic away game defeat at the hands of Iraqi irregulars to the incongruous strains of odd turettish noises about nationalism, morality, philosophy and spirituality.